Energy and Water Minister Gebran Bassil said on Friday that the Rauf Bey ship is not the ultimate solution to the electricity problem prevailing in Lebanon.
Rauf Bey : The energy producer ship BEIRUT: Energy and Water Minister Gebran Bassil said on Friday that the Rauf Bey ship is not the ultimate solution to the electricity problem prevailing in Lebanon. “This is only a temporary solution because the ship provides Lebanon with only 200 megawatts while our electricity deficit reached 1,100 megawatts this summer,” he said. “The ship only supplies us with 20 percent of our need.” His remarks came during his visit to Rauf Bey, a boat belonging to Karadeniz ships operator, on its way to Iraq from Turkey, via Lebanon. Bassil said that the ship’s visit to Lebanon is a clear indication that it is ready to supply the country with power. “Next week we will begin our studies into the possibility to adopt this solution. It will probably not take much time,” he said. “We will also work on the required terms and conditions for us to study the possibility of resorting to this ship.” Bassil said that a temporary solution would also be to acquire this power from Turkey or Syria. However, he continued, the problem of bringing power from Turkey is that it is often faced with problems on the Syrian borders. “Moreover, Syria does not have an excess in power and cannot satisfy our needs,” he said. He noted that Karadeniz is one of the biggest companies “but this does not mean that we are going to use it if it does not offer us the best prices and offers.” He said that if the offers were attractive, deals would be completed by the end of 2010, to start receiving power in summer 2011. Bassil said that Lebanon is in need of five similar ships to be able to solve this problem on a temporary basis. “It is not possible to depend on borrowing our electricity needs. We should be a country capable of producing our own electricity,” he said. “This is why we have formulated an electricity strategy.” He also said that this solution is the cheapest for the time being. “If we stop the operation of one of our power plants while using one of these ships, we will be saving a lot of money,” he said. He added that the government had not adopted such a strategy at the beginning of the summer because of a lack of money. “This solution requires millions of dollars.” He also called upon the government to work fast in order to solve this issue. “We cannot expect to get 24 hours of electricity if we only acquire power from four to five ships,” he said. “We also need to buy or rent plants and generators because the deficit is huge.”
